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stormsbourne · 5 years

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the homestuck epilogue, summarized by me

edited after: I’m leaving this here for my own reference but there’s a decent amount of stuff I got wrong in these. I’ve tried to correct most of it. still please don’t bother with these if, for some reason, you’re still free of this dark knowledge in the post hell 2020 timeline

there’s doubtless parts of both sides (which are actually only one side, big spoilers there) that I’m going to forget so I apologize in advance for that but I read the entire thing very quickly and some parts are more memorable than others. this is also only slightly polished up from when I posted it on discord, which I did in a tremendous hurry. so pardon the grammar

please be wary that I literally CANNOT tag this with everything there are warnings for so if you’re not sure, check the actual epilogue tag list, because literally all of it is mentioned in some capacity.

letsa go

LET’S START WITH CANDY.

john decides not to go. immediately, things start going strangely well for literally everyone, who all get exactly what he thinks they want (or what SOMEONE thinks they want, more on that later. I think it's still john doing the influencing.) davejadekat hook up. john and roxy get married. etc. gamzee gets “redeemed” by which I mean john rescues him at calliope’s request and he goes around saying he’s good now. but as always there's trouble in paradise and the things that seem to be "good endings" end up being bad. jane becomes president of earth but this leads her to become a fascist dictator who may possibly be responsible for the future genocide of trollkind (this shit is full fascist racism shit. “troll camps” are a thing.). dave and karkat are in love with each other and jade getting in with them has actually just made it harder for them to be honest with one another. gamzee basically serves no purpose except to be annoying and gross.

at some point literally all the trolls start getting resurrected because of timeline shenanigans where the black hole is spitting out their ghosts onto earth c (which is actually inside of the black hole in paradox space somehow. don’t think too hard about it). rose and kanaya adopt a grub they name vriska to honor her sacrifice and also because it looks like vriska. john and roxy have a kid named harry anderson. jane basically rapes jake (he's drunk and also the lollipop is invovled) and conveniently gets pregnant with a kid they later name tavros. AS TIME GOES ON, karkat breaks up from djk because he's sick of it and then goes on to lead a troll rebellion against jane. jane starts cucking jake with gamzee. roxy and john break up because john is depressed and also because john is way more interested in texting terezi than in his real-life spouse. dirk kills himself for reasons that have more to do witht the construct of the meat timeline than the candy one.

all of this is slightly out of order but I’m trying to be succinct so when things get crazy I can keep the relevant details close together.

QUICK MEAT DETOUR (MEATOUR).

john decides to go. he makes a quick stop to grab the ring of life from aranea, then scoops up the other game over kids, who head off to face caliborn. the masterpiece goes down as you would expect it to with the beta kids getting stuck in the juju. the betas are later released from the juju by vriska but it doesn't actually kill english (dave does with his sword, then gets decapitated), and john gets nailed hard in the chest by caliborn's gold tooth, which begins to poison and kill him. davepeta appears for like two seconds and then vanishes into the black hole. jade's corpse is the only one of the kids that isn't fucking vaporized but it gets sucked into the black hole. we'll come back to this later. john runs into meenah, who steals the life ring and peaces out into the black hole. then he runs into terezi in the remains of paradox space and the two of them fuck.

IN THE MEANTIME, on earth, karkat mounts an opposition run to jane's presidency, at dave's urging. dave and karkat are explicitly not together but also explicitly dancing around how they both know they love each other; jade keeps trying to start a threesome and both of them are like "UHHHHHH." roxy and calliope are together. jake and dirk have a stupid wrestle rap tv show but it is iterated on over and over again that dirk thinks jake is a useless idiot who he can't treat well and who deserves nothing and whom he needs to babysit and control so cool I guess. dirk goes to talk to rose and it becomes clear both of them are experiencing the same thing with their expansion of consciousness giving them awareness of other timelines and vague control over them (”ascending”) AT WHICH POINT it becomes clear that dirk is actually the narrator+controller of the entire meat timeline. the narration turns orange and dirk’s character voice (or what the epilogue says his character voice is) begins to leak into how it’s written.

BACK TO CANDY FOR A SECOND.

jade's corpse from the meat timeline crashes down into the candy earth c through a ghost black hole portal. nobody knows what the sweet christ is happening, but roxy proposes having another funeral since the kids only see one another at funerals (the last one being dirk’s) and aren't very close. they have the funeral but in the middle of it, jade sits up and has been possessed by the spirit of red calliope, who claims she is protecting this version of the planet and is keeping watch out for a bad actor who could destroy everything.

kid vriska is horrible to kid tavros. john and terezi talk a lot and it's routinely implied that john cares more about her than about roxy, and that john is the only person she talks to. jake eventually walks out on jane with their kid but only after she’s treated him horrendously and continued to cuck him with gamzee. meenah also comes down through a hole in the sky, where she meets karkat and they hook up romantically. dave and jade get married but it’s implied to be a very troubled marriage. kid vriska begins banging harry anderson once they are teens. also once they are teens, ACTUAL (alive) vriska comes crashing down onto the planet from being sucked into the black hole. she and kid vriska have some conversations about terezi, but only after vriska hatefucks gamzee. vriska sends terezi a message. we don't see how this pays off, which makes me think that more is probably coming.

dave, while trying to help karkat with the troll rebellion, comes upon actual literal barack obama, has a conversation about sexuality with him and how he’s not really into jade (here he calls himself “gay” while in the meat timeline he is very explicit about being bisexual). obama tells him that ascension to one’s ultimate self is impossible for the normal human body to withstand and helps him turn into a robot so he can handle the transformatiin and help save another timeline.

btw a war has started between jane’s fascist empire and the trolls, led by karkat, who has an eyepatch. john, having patched some things up a bit with roxy, reconciles with his son. this is basically how candy ends.

OK. LET’S GET BACK TO THE MEAT.

now that dirk's control over the narrative is firmly established he actually starts exerting some level of control over people through his narrative voice. he uses this to start making people do things he wants.

anyway jade falls into a coma at some point and when she wakes up, the spirit of red calliope is using her to "transmit" and dirk and red calliope start literally fighting over who gets to write the story. red calliope wins at first, and dirk's narration is reduced down to small font where he passive aggressively swipes at calliope. alive calliope takes one look at possessed jade and runs away almost literally screaming. oh also I forgot calliope and roxy both go by "they" at this point in time and dirk+calliope spar a bit over that as dirk also keeps calling roxy "her." fun times.

anyway while calliope is running the narrative jake agrees to endorse karkat's presidential run as dirk makes plans involving a rifle and the phrase "jake english, your ass is mine." during the rally where jake is about to endorse karkat, dirk fools calliope into thinking he's trying to shoot jake, but wheels around and hits jade instead with a tranquilizer through a window. this makes red calliope's influence go away and dirk resumes control of the narrative.

using his regained control of the narrative, dirk presses his thumb down on jake to remind jake how much he loves dirk, how he’s IN LOVE with dirk, and how "to love dirk is to obey him" and jake, obligingly, endorses jane in front of the entire crowd gathered there to watch his speech about karkat.

dave and karkat, drinking together after jane handily wins the election, hook up though dave basically has to shout dirk out of his head because he wants to do it on his own terms instead of the way dirk keeps writing it, and dirk WILL NOT LET HIM because dirk knows best. eventually dirk leaves him alone but only after dave basically forcibly chases him out (without knowing what he’s really doing, sort of like Aimless Renegade in the comic). john and terezi come back to earth, where john dies and terezi captchalogues his body. dirk (as narrative) and terezi (as herself) spar a bit until he makes an offer to her to come see him about her dead boyfriend. this is the last we see of her.

dirk then convinces kanaya (using the narrative) that he and rose are in love and he's better for rose than she is and she needs to let them go if she really loves rose. kanaya obligingly does this. dirk leaves kanaya some medicine that will wake jade up and goes to talk to jake, where he sex blackmails jake into lending him a spaceship. jake thinks he's coming along on the trip but dirk assures him this is not the case. jake breaks down literally sobbing and begging to go, dirk kisses him and tells him he'll never let jake break his heart again, and dirk leaves with rose (in a coma which dirk will resolve by putting her into a robot like dave).

jade wakes up and, with memories of red calliope's goals, shouts that dirk has to be stopped, pointing out to various people (namely kanaya) how weird they’ve been acting because he’s been subtly influencing them using the narrative as lowkey mind control. they all make plans to go find dirk though none of them can figure out where the sweet fuck john is (terezi is awol). they ask jake who, sobbing, confirms that dirk took a spaceship, and then go plan to get one of their own and follow him using red calliope's instructions.

also this is impossible to get in anywhere else but roxy is going by “he” now and dirk has a whole paragraph about how suave and manly and cool and masculine he is

WOW THAT WAS HAIRY. THAT IT?

the actual ending of each consists of the following: candyverse davebot shows up on candy earth as red calliope opens a hole presumably back out to the furthest ring (after literally eating caliborn’s body). he and aradia (she was in candy for a while now but did pretty much nothing) are like cool let's go and vault into the hole. meanwhile, meatverse dirk and robot rose draw closer to a new unnamed planet as rose does dirk's laundry. they both know the planet is destined for a new sburb session in the future.

YIKES!

yeah yikes.

WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS?

if you’re like me you should ignore it and just keep doing what you want to do. have fun. the author is dead, long live the fanfic author.

#homestuck epilogue posts #homestuck epilogues summary

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abundantchewtoys · 5 years

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HS Epi Meat p3 reaction

So, starting page 3 of the Meat today.

I've started wondering about the "ultimate self" and how it might come to play or be seen retroactively in Homestuck. A potential thing the story might touch upon is Jack, the only non-player character with multiple selves painting a picture of a grander self. There's also the bunny to some extent, but it's been more item than actor, with exception of the Liv Tyler & Lil Sebastian incarnation.

Also, I've started wondering what, in page 2, can be taken as indication that Dave & Jake have started growing towards that vague shape of an ultimate self. Jake's started sincerely enjoying the attention of the Earth C populace, it seems. Where he is more of a media celebrity, Grandpa was a celebrated entrepreneur. As for Dave, his social activism is of course influenced by his contact with trolls like Karkat with an outspoken idea on the matter. But his call to revolt reminds me of B2 Dave's, but implemented in a way that might please the Sufferer, if not Kankri too.

But anyway, are we going to follow Dave towards Dirk, or is the perspective going to switch back to John now, the first page in-canon? To recap, I believe he'll travel back to a moment in the Game Over timeline before Aranea killed anyone, and punch her. Or, he might punch either Jade or Jane, who at that time were mindcontrolled by Condesce.

---

"> JOHN: Zap." Oh hell yes.

"You zap back into canon. It’s been so long, you’d forgotten what it feels like. The atmosphere smacks unmistakably of... How can you describe it? Relevance? Legitimacy? Funny how you never would have thought to put it that way until you left." I love the smell of canon in the evening. It smells like... relevance?

"It takes you a moment to recognize where you are, even though Rose’s instructions were very specific. A place bright and gaudy and filled with the stench of teenage ennui." In other words, the Sburb session? :P

"It’s your old living room on the gold battleship, where you spent three years caught up in a lot of weird, furry romantic drama while learning to unlove everything you once held sacred." Oooh, so, is he going to spot his past self just before he disappeared, as he put his arm into the juju in his dream? If so, he might be in time to deny Aranea the ring even! (Also, I wonder if this is meant to be taken as that John came back from coming back on the fact he thought Con Air sucked or not. :P Fickle as the wind, that boy's opinions. ;)) Also, what did I spot there from the corner of my eye, a certain colour of pesterlog and a certain name in front... :::;) Time for John to derail a derailment of the alpha timeline! And in doing so... lending it legitimacy???? I mean, will the fact be brought up that John's original timeline was in fact a doomed timeline or not? The fact that he created a better future is irrelevant to some extent, the Aradiabots did the same. I mean, the juju is more potent than mere time travel, but still.

Also, now I think of the fact that the very thing Aranea set out to do : create a timeline that deprives Lord English's origin of legitimacy is in fact what John kind of went back to undo!

"The fridge pops open and out roll Aranea and Gamzee." Pffff, so he's literally going to nip her plan in the bud, right after she got her resurrection. What'll the ring end up being used for though, if it's not just going to stay on her finger like with Calliope?

"Gamzee honks" What else is new.

"Aranea staggers to her feet, looking rather pleased with herself. Until she notices you and gapes in bewilderment.

ARANEA: What are you doing here?!" That was not what she foresaw. Then again, did she really plan to take his ring KNOWING he would've disappeared?? That would mean she didn't know he received retcon powers, else it was kind of a gamble from the start!

"> Rose was perfectly clear about what to do next.

You make a fist, and sort of flinch and look away when you do it. No matter how many years you’ve spent living on a planet with absolute gender parity, this feels wrong. Still, you hit Aranea pretty fucking hard, underestimating your own strength just as badly as you did the last time you clobbered a hapless Serket. She goes flying back, hits the couch, and KOs instantly into a pile of Smuppets." I can picture this scene so clearly, since we have the circumstantial simultaneous scene to compare it, and yet I can't wait for the fan art.

"You then take her wrist in your hand, slide the ring off her finger, and" I wonder what this'll do! Finally we'll get confirmation on what removing the ring does, whether it just grants a fancy resurrection boon or the artefact needs to remain on the finger!

... I do wonder what Rose intended for John to do with the ring. ... Maybe they'll have post-retcon Game Over Roxy (R5 Roxy, since this is I believe the 5th retconned timeline John made) go to sleep and find Calliope, creating a different version of Calliope even though her ghost's in the dreambubbles and therefore outside this session's timeline?

"pocket it." Okay, so we won't see the effect instantly.

"> Isn’t there something you’re forgetting?" You turned your back on the body! the clown! the clown body!

"Gamzee stares up at you with his horrible, limpid eyes. There’s something serene, sinister, and sensual all at once about the look he’s laying on you." Is he... getting black feelings for John? ... Okay, Blap's theory is he's probably still looking quite stoner, still under Aranea's spell. That... actually doesn't make this any better.

"> Do everyone a favor and put an end to his preposterous narrative relevance." Uhhhhh... You canNOT put DOWN the CLOWN, John, everyone knows that. Also, killing? Not John's style. ... Will he just zap him into blankspace? Or captchalogue him, that'd be a laugh.

"You wisely decide that this clown will lend nothing valuable to the narrative whatsoever if he is allowed to remain outside of your childhood refrigerator." ... Ah. He's getting fridged again. :P Welp, you had your murderstuck episode three years hence Gamzee, that'll be all from you.

"You slam the fridge shut and resolve to never think about Gamzee Makara again." 'Put in the fridge' is the new 'put on a bus', then? :P ... I don't know how serious this is to be taken, I'm more leaning towards Chekov's Clown here.

"> Zap to the next plot point." Wow, okay, so... He... uhm, he doesn't stay here??? But... wait, okay, so, without Aranea, the whole session's still not going the same as the victory timeline. ... Wait, okay, Aranea wasn't "unalive" explicitly, just temporarily knocked out. The timeline could still continue as it was, Aranea pigheadidly going through with her plan. We saw it happen when he started rewriting the timeline in preparation for THE retcon, when Terezi smelled him in her house and after she found hints on the meteor towards it being Gamzee that killed Nepeta - the timeline would've just gone on as 'planned' if not for something major to change. The ring not being that, in this case, means Aranea will go to Derse, switch it for LOFAF... I wonder at what point, exactly, John will emerge to really derail the timeline. And what'll happen to that timeline's Condesce!

... Okay, admittedly, during the previous retcon, John first went back to the Reunion moment on his timeline before travelling further back and changing things...

Also, when you think about it, John just retconned a retconned timeline here, hahah.

Well, that's all for tonight - seeing as how the next page seems to be a whole lot longer again, it'd take too long to go through.

#homestuck #upd8 #homestuck epilogues #reaction #spoiler alert #john egbert #aranea serket #[s] game over #homestuck liveblog

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utopianparadoxist · 7 years

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Xefros Tritoh is a Page of Time. also, class roleplay is real.

I’m still too sick to record for the Joey video, so while I don’t have the time to make a full-scale analysis post on everything about Xefros right now (theres a lot) I figured I’d make two crucial things about reading his character clear:

A) Xefros’ unhealthy relationship with Dammek is the latest example yet of unhealthy Class Roleplay dynamics. If anyone remembers, I speculated weeks ago, before the game dropped, that Xefros’ relationship to the role of Butlering might well turn out to be both unhealthy for him and reflective of Classpect behavior. As it turns out, I seem to have been correct. Specifically, Xefros is roleplaying a Knight through his unwilling assignment of the role of the Butler. B) Xefros is a Page of Time.

Let’s explore them in order, considerably more briskly than with the Joey post. There’s more to say about Xefros, obviously, but unfortunately, I just don’t have the....

Time. Something I have in common with Xefros, fittingly enough.

Xefros’ general lack of time to keep up with the various demands on his time--mostly Dammek’s demands on his time--is a strong focus point of his character.

And just in case we’re not super sold on it yet, Xefros does us the Time-saving courtesy of establishing his relationship to the aspect by reinforcing Time’s longstanding relationship to music and rhythm! How nice of you, Xefros.

Now where were we?

Right. Xefros has a lot on his plate: Band practice, revolutionary lectures, butler practice, and only the occasional reverie about getting to spend time on something Xefros himself finds interesting.

And most of that time is lost in various forms of service to Dammek. Serve is, at this point, basically inarguably the key verb for the Knight/Page class pair--combining connotations of providing service/help, dealing defeats/ownage/sick burns, and literally serving/giving items to others, as the verb counterparts to Thieves/Rogues’ ‘Steal/Take’.

So Xefros’ unhealthy position of servitude to Dammek is explicitly linked to his unwanted, forced assignment of the role of Butler--which in Homestuck terms loosely correlates to the role of Knight. Dave’s biggest contribution to his session is to serve all his friends time or provide them with resources through the use of his time, for example.

But where doing so comes naturally to Dave, for Xefros it is an effort to play the role. Xefros does not find butlering fulfilling, and he’s not particularly good at it, either--it’s not where his natural talents shine.

This is a common thread with most kinds of class roleplay--it usually doesn’t work out well for a player character to pretend to be something they’re not.

Perhaps particularly so when the role the character is playing encourages them to adopt the opposite class alignment, as when an ACTIVE player is conditioned into acting PASSIVELY. This line comes from Xefros’ FLARP book, by the way, which has a bunch of Classpect references. Fitting, since FLARP is what introduces us to the concept of Class Roleplay in Homestuck proper.

Because this line kind of has to be taken in context. The truth is, Xefros would rather be playing a game. And it’s in the context of that game, along with Xefros’ childhood and natural effect on others, that we’ll find references to his true classpect, buried under the burden of the imposed Butler role.

Pages, like Knights, are linked to the image of the Butler--but not as players who fill the role themselves. Rather, Pages seem to have a talent for inspiring other players to act as Butlers for them. Or to close the ouroboros loop of classpecting: To get others to act as their Knights.

Xefros’ affinity for Arena Stickball immediately strikes this echo, as one of the things Xefros immediately remembers is having his Brawler defending him-- a relationship echoed by Tavros’ affinity for using animals as his warriors, and Jake’s summoning of a splinter of Dirk to protect him from Aranea.

Xefros’ demeanor quickly turns around an overwhelmed and exhausted Joey, making her quickly grow concerned and then adamant about helping him in return for his own kindness.

This ability of Pages to inspire others around them to want to help them is part of the reason why I think it’s likely Dammek’s concern for him is at least somewhat genuine--though that’s by no means the same as healthy. Vriska’s concern for Tavros was genuine, too, lest we forget.

And Xefros is prone to both Giving things to others and trying to make others happy in ways that ultimately turn out to benefit him. This comes through clearest with Sloth Dad, whom Xefros would give gifts or receive food from whilst always benefiting from the arrangement in some way.

Xefros’ first cuebat, his physical strength, and open passage from his house are all things achieved by giving. But past the key verbs, Xefros’ clearest indication for both his class of Page and his aspect of Time come through in his relationship to his ancestral figure: Xultan Matzos.

Xefros’ text logs on Xultan are drowning in both references to Time and a profound personal admiration. He likens Xefros to a figure from history, imagines convoluted alt-timeline crossovers featuring various versions of Xultan, fantasizes about having the kind of psychic power Xultan had, and more.

He also admits to fantasizing about just imagining Xultan standing around, believing in him. This fits Xultan squarely into the archetype of the Pages’ imaginary friend, a slot filled by Rufioh for Tavros, and Brain Ghost Dirk for Jake.

Perhaps most telling, however, is his imitation of Xultan--a copycat approach to self-improvement that Xefros credits with at least occasional success! This has common ground with Homestuck’s Pages too, as Tavros ultimately finds narrative success as he fully embodies his imitation of the role of Peter Pan.

Jake English also famously copies female action movie tropes in both fashion choices and his eventual fall into the damsel in distress trope, whereby it’s his imagination and faith that Dirk can save him that saves the day.

And finally, Xefros’ copying habit and Page role are referenced in a two-for-one reference combo, through Joey’s persistent early habit of calling him Xerox.

In the 90′s, Xerox (Logo pictured above) was the colloquial term for both a product and the company that produced it. Particularly, Xerox was a popular brand of photocopier, meaning a machine designed to copy text and images onto a blank Page.

I haven’t come close to covering half of what I want to say about Xefros, but I hope this will at least give the rest of the fandom an idea of how he’s set up. Just for the record, I don’t think the X on Pa’s globe was pointing at Dammek.

Particularly given Pa’s own status as a Page, Joey’s budding friednship with one puts us in a very interesting position. How will Xefros and Joey’s personalities mesh in the long run, and is Xefros involved in whatever plans Pa seems to have devised?

Interesting questions to consider as we wait for Act 2.

If you’d like to enable me to expand on this subject, and so bring more questions like these to light in the future, please consider throwing a couple bucks my way on Patreon. This is basically definitely my last written post for a good while, as I am going on hiatus to get my financial life in order as detailed in this post.

I’m really overwhelmed and grateful by the support so many have shown me, and excited to take posts like the one I did on Joey and this one to Youtube, where more of the fandom can engage with classpects in an accessible way!

You can also feel free to drop by and chat about this and other interesting Hiveswap and Homestuck topics in the r/Hiveswap discord!

Hope to see you soon, and until then--Keep Rising!

[Patreon] [Hiveswap Discord]

#Xefros Tritoh #Hiveswap #Classpects #Page of Time #Homestuck #My MSPA Analysis

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